Dario grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Lowell High School.[13] He was a member of the USA Physics Olympiad team in 2000.[14] Amodei began college at Caltech, where he worked with Tom Tombrello as one of his Physics 11 students. He later transferred to Stanford University, where he received a bachelor's degree in physics.[15] He was awarded the Hertz Foundation Fellowship in 2007 while earning his doctorate in biophysics from Princeton University. He later received the Hertz Thesis Prize in 2011 for his doctoral research on electrophysiology of neural circuits.[16] He was a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine.[17]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5878999&forum_id=2,#49974013)

He is a proponent of an "entente" strategy in which a coalition of democratic nations use advanced AI systems in military applications to achieve a decisive advantage over adversaries while sharing the benefits with cooperating nations

Does that sound like DGAF or literally stupid as shit

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5878999&forum_id=2,#49974029)

Dario Amodei was born in San Francisco, California, in 1983.[1] His sister, Daniela, was born four years later.[1] His father, Riccardo Amodei, an Italian-American leather craftsman from Massa Marittima, Tuscany, died when Dario was a young adult.[9][10] His mother, Elena Engel, a Jewish American born in Chicago, worked as a project manager[11] for libraries.[1][12]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5878999&forum_id=2,#49974037)

Karp: There's so many things I think we all want to talk about, but let's get to the NVIDIA deal first. Because I have so much respect for NVIDIA and Jensen Huang, I'm going to try to keep this more adult than I usually do. But the truth is, if you want to know how this came together from my perspective, there are a lot of technical issues. Who controls the models? Who controls the weights? Who controls the value of your business?

But, you know, we're sitting on critical infrastructure across America, Ukraine, Israel. Everyone who uses LLMs on the battlefield runs on top of our ontology. And our clients are just, to say they're unhappy with the Frontier Labs is to say I'm welcome at the Berkeley faculty. It's like there's just a level of discomfort and loss of trust that also made it really, really...

Modi: Okay, unpack that. What do you mean by that?

Karp: Well, when you're using large language models in enterprise, battlefield context, regulated context, or manufacturing, you have to have what's called an application layer. We have this thing called ontology that now everyone's copying. But de facto, it takes a large language model. It makes it safe and useful and precise. So safe because it doesn't touch your underlying data. Safe because it prevents the large language model from caching your data and replicating your business. Safe because it doesn't transfer your IP of how to fight, secret data, top secret data, or in a clinical context.

So the general way these things were sold, and again, these people are, Sam and Dario — there's nothing more fun than debating Dario in private. So I'm not throwing shade at them. But something has gone completely wrong. And the basic view among enterprises in this country is: I'm going to chillax and waste my time with tokens. I'm going to get no value, and they're going to get my IP.

Modi: That sounds like shade, though. And not just shade. It sounds like you're saying...

Karp: No, no, no, no, no, sorry. This is reporting. And this is reporting that I've literally, against my own interest, called... Like, I'm profiting from this, right? So the reality is you may not like us at my former school, Haverford, or Berkeley, but enterprises in this country trust and love us, especially ones that are involved in critical infrastructure, both public and private. Okay?

I want for us and our friends across the globe to have the very best tech resources. In fact, the whole secret of Palantir is the forward-deployed model, the products that have been five years ahead. Everyone said FDEs were services. They said we don't even know what an ontology is. That's the only thing people talk about now. The secret was we delivered the best things for the warfighters. Those warfighters have serious trust issues vis-à-vis the Frontier Labs. Then you have my enterprises in the private sector who have the same issues. They're like, why would they get access to my data if they're going to build my alpha? Why wouldn't I control the weights?

And that's where you get this partnership. What aligns me with NVIDIA, and I think is what the technical customers want, which is control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha. They want to know they own the means of production. It's not being transferred to someone else. They're not interested in some fake deploy co that somehow is deploying tokens that transfers the alpha to a third party. And the jig is up.

Our products are agnostic. We now sell a product to customers that allows you to switch from model to model. And we're completely agnostic. But we need to rebuild trust. And that trust is going to happen where everyone gets to ask and answer basic questions. Who owns the data? Where is it cached? Are the prompts secure? Is this being transferred to you?

Modi: Okay, if it was so valuable... Let's say I can make you a billion dollars tomorrow. Wouldn't I say, I'll make you a billion dollars and I want 30%? Why are they charging for tokens if it's so valuable?

So then, Alex, if the key, from what I'm hearing you say, is a secure, American-born, open-source model, how quickly can your model compete with the frontier AI in terms of reasoning and agentic AI tasks?

Karp: What I am claiming, obviously slightly true but slightly self-centered, is it's the model plus an application layer plus compute. It is really all three.

Modi: Okay, just look at our financials.

Karp: The reason why everyone is chillaxing with bad financials and growth while losing money is the client refuses to pay the true cost. The two places that actually make money, like profit, free cash flow, are our application layer called ontology and compute.

What I am not just claiming: we can take an open model and, in the classified or non-classified context, get it to the point of a frontier model, but A, you control the weights.

Modi: So what is the true cost? Not just what you're paying.

Karp: The true cost is what you make minus what you lose, meaning the value of your business. But we can get the frontier application to be exactly the same as a frontier model, without the risk of transferring the alpha of your business to another. By the way, you could do this with a frontier closed model, too. But then the clients have to be able to ask and answer very basic questions. Are you keeping the data? Are you going to enter our business?

In the classified context, when the Department of War goes to you and says, I need this application — do they get to control the weights to do it? Or do you get to control the weights? Are we really going to outsource the battlefield of this country to the consensus view in Silicon Valley? That is effing insane.

Every single enterprise in this country, in private — a lot of them don't want to speak in public because it gets outsourced to the neurodivergent crazy person that apparently is on drugs, the one thing I don't do. But I'm telling you, at every single enterprise I deal with, these people are livid. They're like, I am paying for tokens that create no value. These people are stealing the weights and alpha of my business, and they're creating a wealth tax that does not help the poor. It just punishes, starts with the billionaires. And the reason for it is because these models have been completely over, irresponsibly oversold.

Modi: You sound pretty angry.

Karp: No, this is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me. And I'm telling you, it is absolutely a problem for this country because we are on the cutting edge of every single AI technology. But if you're going to triply oversell something, the enterprises are just tired of it.

I want you, everybody watching this, to test what I'm saying, especially investors who think somehow this is working. Pick up the phone and call a CEO in private. Not in public. Every single person here can do this. Call two or three and say, "Madman Karp is on TV saying we're livid. I'm not going to quote you. You know I won't quote you. You have a history." And see, they're twice as livid as me.

Modi: So if you're right, though, does that mean that we are living in some kind of terrible AI bubble and that we're going to — in a quarter or two or three quarters from now — hear that big enterprises are canceling their subscriptions to these products or that the build-out is going to slow because the math doesn't add?

Karp: This is the tragedy of it. The reality of compute plus ontology plus model is changing the course of history. Ask the Ukrainians. Ask the Israelis. Ask our Department of War. Ask the enterprises that are working. We do not have to oversell what we have. And it's all being built in this country — basically, except for the open models from China, except for NVIDIA open models, which are world-class. It's all being built here. We do not have to overhype.

Modi: Right, but if they're charging the enterprise three times as much as they should be, and then they have to pull back on that, that changes the math of all of this. Who's the they?

Karp: The they are the large language models...

Modi: By the way, it impacts your partner, NVIDIA, because they...

Karp: Sorry. I'm talking about the they — the enterprises that power this country, as the most important thing.

Modi: You're talking about the they as Frontier Labs and Silicon Valley.

Karp: That's great. I'm focused on the enterprises of this country.

Modi: Where do the hyperscalers fall on this?

Karp: Well, it depends what they're selling. That's very, very downstream from us. We're completely agnostic. We prefer a world where there are more hyperscalers — where there's all sorts of new hyperscalers: Elon, NVIDIA. We like that world. The same reason when you go online and there's 50 kinds of coats, you get to pick the one you like.

But what is happening among the most technical players is they're saying: I want something I own. This is my business. I want to own the GPUs. I want to own my data. I want to own the model. I want to control the alpha.

Modi: So is that creating more opportunity for Palantir? Are you already seeing the government cancel contracts with Anthropic and OpenAI and saying we want to work with Palantir?

Karp: We're literally not here. We're not here to talk about what's going to happen to a very important business in the country, except for, obviously, to some extent, mine. In my business, we have much more demand than we can supply. Maybe I'm the crazy person that still only cares about free cash flow, but we have more business than we can supply. Look, if you just look at our financials, you can see, like, two years out, you can see $15, $18 billion in free cash flow.

Modi: So are you frustrated by the stock's performance over the last...

Karp: You know what? I've been at this for 20 years. When we first started talking, people were like, is this a services company? Is it worthless? The markets are short-term, very fickle, and also, quite frankly, where I would throw some shade — what investors actually understand tech? They think because they're very high IQ and they understand certain things, they understand what they're using. Basically, the fault of investors is typically: I use it, therefore it's valuable. Yeah, what an enterprise uses — it's doing complicated manufacturing or pharmacological research or putting a bomb on it or bringing special forces people home safely — very different than what you're using.

Modi: Do you think if you're a pharmaceutical company or you're the government, should you not be, therefore, using Anthropic or OpenAI without your layer on top? I mean, would you say that's dangerous for them?

Karp: Look, first of all, honestly, the one thing that I am slightly frustrated about: when OpenAI or Anthropic especially are talking about critical infrastructure, it only is being used in our product, my product. And there's a reason for that. These things are very, very valuable. What they have done building models is world historic. And just so you see, I'm not throwing shade — Dario is a literally historic figure. And he came from behind, and he's now number one. Almost no one in the world I've seen anything like this.

The reality is critical infrastructure does not run these models without an application layer. In almost all cases, and maybe it won't be all cases someday, that application layer is our ontology. That's a fact. And there's a reason for it. It's not that some people love me, some people hate me — they're not buying it because of that. They're buying because these things have to be made safe.

American enterprises are run by the shrewdest, most wily, intelligent people on the planet. If you think they're going for that — you can go try to sell me, like my parents still want me to get a job as a faculty member at Berkeley. Go try to get me a job at Berkeley. I'm very qualified. It's not happening.

Modi: Do you agree with the notion of the most robust, powerful AI model? Do you think the models should be withheld from the public due to cybersecurity risks?

Karp: Look, I think you really have to make the one of the things we're really trying to get the West to do is move away from like not liking it. These are very technical. What does the model do? Who is restricted to do? I would say it is a loser to restrict something from the government because you don't agree with how the government fights war and then open it up to the world, including our adversaries. Go sell that to the American people where they already don't like you.

Modi: You have a lot of data that you look at. Is the world getting better at AI? Is the gap now — are there two relevant tech centers, two and a half: America, China, Israel?

Karp: Those are the tech centers of the world. And I spent half my life in Europe. I want Europe to be relevant. And Sweden has a real tech scene. You have to be — you can't just like, you know — but the relevant tech centers, we are. We have a peer-to-peer adversary in China. China has lots of advantages, including quite frankly we have to find ways to make the world better. We're not going to be able to do it. I think we're going to have to — these models, raise the standard of living for every American, and Americans need to have a sense it's not just the people at this table, people watching it getting rich. And there are real issues there, and we have left and right, far left, far right gone completely nuts.

You would think that the greatest problem in the world, if you were on the far left, is somehow it's like, if things work, it's evil and bad. By the way, I've been wholesale kicked out of my own party, because I warned that this was going to happen on the left, and it is happening. Then you have on the far right, like, on both sides, you think the biggest problem of our society are like warlocks roaming the street, building technology. They, of course, they can't understand it. Like, they attack Palantir for the craziest. China doesn't have that problem, but it also doesn't have the creativity, ingenuity, and deep tech creativity we have.

But the reality is, it's not a foregone conclusion that we win. That, we have — the biggest problem in this country on these debates is, we debate these things as if we don't have adversaries. It's not actually true. It's binary. They will win, or we will win.

Modi: Let me ask you, I just want to pivot to a slightly different conversation, but related. You have been a proponent and great supporter of Israel over the years, great supporter of Israel, and right now, we have a ceasefire in the Middle East, which we hope holds. Having said that, there is a bit of space between where the U.S. is now and where Netanyahu is on what is happening here, and whether they ultimately be protected, and I'm curious, given that, and given also your relationship with the U.S. government, and the work you do there, how you think about that disconnect?

Karp: Well, look, this is like so many things. I am the most publicly supportive CEO of Israel, and that's true. I think Israel is on the side of good. Now, in private — because I have a, I'm known there, to be fair, I'm probably also the most effective critic of like, hey, I didn't agree with this. Without going, and I would be very happy to be more in public about that, except for I think not all — there are many legitimate criticisms of Israel in every other country. Although I would say, do you want a country that can sometimes be difficult as your partner, or do you want partners that have no tech scene as a partner? And so like, it's like in this world, having a fully adult, independent, aligned country that doesn't always agree with us is much better than what we somehow have in Europe, right? That's, we do not want that.

American-Israel will always have — will never be fully aligned, and that's totally okay. My position is they are a very important partner, and we are proud to support them. And in private, you can bet your last dollar I call and complain about a lot of things.

Modi: So what do you think of this MOU, or whatever deal you think is on offer, and whatever the deal that is, do you think that we are now in a better place than we were before? You mean in Iran?

Karp: In Iran, and vis-à-vis also what you think it means for Israel? Well, look, Israel — I don't, Israel, I'm going to leave the Israeli thing for my talking to them in private, because I just don't think at this point, it's very hard in public to talk about them, because you just have people — look, there are legitimate criticisms of Israel. Half the people criticizing Israel just don't believe it should exist. And that's just a fact.

And so, like, I'm not going to, like, totally play into their hands by saying things I say in private. In America, America has to rep its own interests. Do I think Iran's been degraded? Yes. Are there things that I don't think are in the public space that would be comforting people if they are? Yes. And I'll leave it at that.

Modi: Wow. Pretty great. Thank you.

Karp: Thank you.

[Off-camera chatter]

Karp: I really appreciate your time.

Modi: You don't have to get up from the seat yet.

Karp: No, never. I feel like I'm going to be kicked out of the room.

Modi: I really appreciate you guys. You know, the thing I actually like about you guys the most when I watch you is just that you actually — and it's very hard to pull this off — you actually have divergent opinions. And somehow you guys stay together.

Panel: This is true.

Karp: We're still on camera. Oh, yeah. Well, great. It's honestly so boring, the other stuff. And again, I get kicked out of these rooms. I, even if I agreed with you, I would try to disagree with you. It's more fun.

Modi: Thank you for bringing Alex here this morning. Thank you for your perspective on this, Alex.

Karp: Thank you. We appreciate it very, very much. People live in echo chambers. They need to hear both. It's so crazy.

Karp (off-camera): And I'll tell you, we're off camera now. No, we're still going. Let me get off camera. Do you want me to read this Trump stuff or not? You know, okay, hold on. Now we're still on...

President Trump was just speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews. He's preparing to take his first flight on the Qatari-gifted Air Force One. He's en route to North Dakota for the opening of Teddy Roosevelt's presidential library. He addressed yesterday's financial disclosures saying everyone is profiting, including him, because the stock market is up.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5878999&forum_id=2,#49974051)

Z.ai will be caught up to mythos by eoy and honestly that's good for all of us

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5878999&forum_id=2,#49974121)